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The average Americans who joined the Occupy protests, witnessed police brutality, filmed it with their phones, and uploaded those images to the internet for all to see ARE JOURNALISTS.

Someone with a no-name nothing blog who chooses to follow and cover the news, offer information and analysis to inform others, IS A JOURNALIST.

The title is bestowed on anyone seeking to give people information they didn't have before. Thanks to the modern printing press known as the internet, we can all do that. If we do, WE ARE JOURNALISTS.

Arguments to the contrary not only piss on both the letter and spirit of the First Amendment, but mightily empower the bullshit factory that is modern "mainstream" news.

The most important reporting happening today is being done by tinkers, tailors, teachers, baristas, bricklayers, truck drivers, cabbies, and all the other people from every walk of life who didn't go to J-school and don't work for a media company owned by five rich guys you'll never meet. That reporting has changed the world, and will continue to do so, so long as they are free to do it.

The government CAN NOT be allowed to decide who is and is not a journalist. Arguments in favor of such a view are just another chapter in the ongoing blizzard of nonsense from the-government-is-always-right power-worshippers who have to defend everything this government does, no matter how preposterous.

I am a journalist. So are you, if you choose to be, and if you dedicate yourself to it.

Last edited Sat Sep 21, 2013, 06:05 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
No one at fox news is a journalist. Rush is not a journalist. Drudge is not a journalist. But, any one of them can be, if they chose to.

A simple solution is negating of shield laws.

The government should not get to define who gets covered by shield laws based on some arbitrary system.